Chapter X

Belchamber’s first feeling was that it was a judgment on him for having allowed his mind to wander to worldly frivolities and thoughts of personal amusement. Certainly he had been brought up with a round turn. His next was one of bewilderment as to what it behoved him to do under the circumstances. Ought he to let his mother or Lord Firth know what he had seen? He recoiled with all the force of schoolboy traditions from the idea of telling tales. Had Arthur recognised him? he wondered, and would he come to the rendezvous at the club next day, even supposing that he got his message? He had been on his way to call on his grandmother, and, as he omitted to give the driver any fresh instructions, he presently found himself at Sunborough House. Having ascertained from the porter that the duchess was out, he was turning away when he saw some one signalling to him from one of the ground-floor windows, and Claude came running bareheaded down the steps.

‘My dear old boy! this _is_ nice,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea you were in town. I saw you from the window of my room. Come in and have some tea, and I’ll tell them to let us know when grandmamma comes in.’

Sainty was drawn affectionately into a large room near the front-door, which Claude explained was his peculiar sanctum. ‘It used just to be a sort of waiting-room, and was much wasted, so I got the Pompier to let me have it for mine. That bell rings from his study, so he can get at me whenever he wants me.’

It was a pleasant room, with two high windows draped with some sombre, respectable, woollen fabric. Its original furniture consisted of a large writing-table with a gallery, and a set of green leather chairs, two high-backed mahogany bookcases with brass lattice-work in their doors, and several good old engravings on the walls, the duke’s father, mother, and grandfather, after Lawrence, Mesdames Taglioni, and Fanny Ellsler, Count d’Orsay, the Queen on horseback, and the Duke of Wellington. On this severe ground Claude had, so to speak, embroidered a fantasia of more modern objects--little tables, low easy-chairs, cigarette-cases, a vase or two of flowers, several books, reviews, and paper-knives, and a vast quantity of signed and framed photographs of all shapes and sizes. With the exception of an eminent man or two, and a few sleek young peers, they all represented beautiful ladies--ladies looking over their shoulders, with their hands behind their backs, ladies with sheaves of lilies and baskets of flowers, ladies looking out of paper-mullioned windows wreathed in sham ivy, ladies with children in lace frocks, ladies in ball dress, court dress, fancy dress, or simply what may be called photographic dress, consisting of the sitter’s best low-necked gown and a hat, a combination which no one could be expected to believe was ever worn outside the studio. Three large official dispatch-boxes with paper tags hanging out of their ends stood on the writing-table, and a receptacle like a good-sized dog-basket bulged with letters for the post.

His cousin was so cordial and affectionate, did the honours of his official residence with such charming grace, that Sainty felt impelled rather against his will to tell him of his late encounter. Perhaps if circumstances had not thrown him so immediately in his way, he might not have selected Claude as his confidant; but he desperately needed help and counsel, and here was some one ready with both, some one whom to tell would have none of the grave, official importance of a report to Lady Charmington or his uncle. Warmed by tea and his cousin’s enthusiastic welcome, he had not been ten minutes in the room before he had confided to its occupant all his uneasiness and its latest cause.

‘Really! Arthur _is_ an ass!’ was Claude’s comment. ‘What strikes me first of all is the infernal imprudence of the whole thing. Why can’t he go and see the lady quietly, instead of flourishing about Piccadilly in a hansom with her at five o’clock in the afternoon? He’s just as likely as not to meet grandmamma or your uncle as any one else, and then all the fat will be in the fire.’

There was a ring of very genuine annoyance in Claude’s voice; and Sainty, though he smiled at the aspect of the matter that so characteristically presented itself to Morland as the important one, felt that he had not brought his troubles to an indifferent or unsympathetic person.

‘But who do you suppose it is?’ he asked, ‘and where can Arthur have made her acquaintance? Perhaps it may not be--what I fear; but she looked rather--well, rather----’

‘Yes,’ said Claude, laughing; ‘I should say it was ten to one she _was_ “rather.”’

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ cried Sainty. ‘It was bad enough when I thought he was only neglecting his work, and just idling and amusing himself; but this makes it all much more serious. But Claude, can’t you help? Can you not guess who it might be?’

‘Oh, it might be any one of a dozen people,’ said Claude indifferently. ‘It doesn’t so much matter _who_ it is,’ he added; ‘the great thing is to try and get him not to make a fool of himself. You know, dear Saint, it is useless to expect the high moral view from _me_. What you want is that Arthur shan’t go and do anything idiotic, isn’t it? Well, I’m much more likely to prevent his giving the whole show away than you are, ain’t I? You leave it to me; I’ll see what can be done.’

It was on the tip of Sainty’s tongue to say that the eye which Claude had promised him at Belchamber to keep on Arthur, could not have been peculiarly vigilant; but he did not wish to alienate the one person who might perhaps help him, so he expressed gratitude and a confidence he did not wholly feel; and just then a footman came in to say that ‘’Er grace had come in, but was dining out, and must rest before dressing, and she ‘oped Lord Belchamber would come to luncheon next day.’

‘By the way, yes,’ said Claude, when the man had left them. ‘To-night is the dinner at the French Embassy, and then there is the ball at What’s-their-names, and grandmamma must shed her day-skin and give the new one time to harden.’

‘What do you _call_ her, Claude?’ asked Sainty. ‘I never feel as if I _could_ call her “grandmamma.”’

‘Oh, I never call her that to her face, _bien entendu_. It was a dreadful question at first. I couldn’t call her Hélo as her stepsons do; but I’ve hit on a lovely plan. I call her ‘Grace,’ suggesting facetiously ‘Your grace,’ do you see? and it sounds like a cross between a Christian name and a sort of compliment, grace personified, that kind of business. Well, good-night, old chap, if you must go. Don’t worry about the little blessing; you had much better let me see what I can do. Right you are. And for the Lord’s sake, don’t say a word to your uncle or any of ’em.’

‘Don’t worry,’ that was still the burthen of such very various counsellors, as Gerald Newby and Claude Morland, and more or less the line his mother took, who was again so unlike either of them; and meanwhile he was expected to stand by and see Arthur drifting to ruin under his eyes. However, he so far obeyed Claude’s injunctions as to say nothing to Lord Firth on the subject, when they presently dined together, though his principal object in coming to town had been to ask his advice.

‘Have you seen Arthur?’ his uncle asked in the course of dinner, and Sainty only said, ‘I called at Monkton’s and at his lodgings, but I didn’t find him.’

‘It was a rum idea of your mother’s, letting him come to London, but it seems to be working, and so does he. I’ve asked him once or twice to come and dine, but he hardly ever comes. He says the evening is one of the best times he has for work.’

Sainty had but little chance of private talk with Claude the next day, when he lunched at Sunborough House. His cousin drew him gently to a window when he arrived, while the numerous chance guests were awaiting the appearance of their hostess.

‘I’ve thought of who it very likely was,’ he said, with engaging frankness. ‘If it’s the person I think, she’s a good girl, and won’t do him any harm. You know you can’t expect to keep Arthur away from women; the important thing is that he shouldn’t get into bad hands, and I’ll drop him a hint to be more careful and not to go and _afficher_ himself. Hush! here’s our respectable ancestress. Well, Grace, here’s your _good_ boy come to see you, to make a change from your bad one.’

Sainty never knew whether it was circumstances or design that made it impossible for him to get another word alone with Claude. He did not feel that Morland’s help would be exactly of the kind or in the direction that he wanted, and he was more than ever anxious to see his brother himself, and try and find out just how much was wrong. He went early in the afternoon to a club in St. James’s Street, of which he had lately become a member, so as to be sure not to miss Arthur if he should come there. To his surprise, the porter handed him a letter as he went in, which proved to be a note from Lady Eccleston asking him to dine the same evening. He thought it would be pleasant to accept, but decided to keep it till he had found out if Arthur had any plans for the evening; so he put it into his pocket, and turned into a room on the ground floor, where some of the latest publications were displayed on a long table.

A group of young men who were laughing uproariously over a book desisted rather suddenly on his entrance, as one of them, in whom he recognised the young stockbroker Pryor, looked towards him and whispered something to the rest. They faced round and stared at him much as sheep look at a dog, while Austin Pryor came forward holding out his right hand, with the book still in his left.

‘I say,’ he said, ‘how odd you should come in just this minute! Have you seen this book of your friend Parsons’? It’s only out to-day, and they say you can’t get a copy for love or money. Wasn’t he that untidy chap with a fishy eye who was at your coming of age last year? I’m blowed if he hasn’t gone and stuck the whole show into his book, only he’s made your brother the hero instead of you, he’s turned you into a girl, a great heiress with rather jimmy health and a cork leg, who’s in love with the villain. But the rest of us are there, even down to poor little me. Your mother, your uncle--oh! and the duchess--he’s touched the old duchess off to the life, even to the colour of the gowns she wore at dinner. Well--he’s made his fortune. They say he’s been offered ten thousand for his next book, if he’ll only guarantee two well-known people bein’ in it. It’s better biz than the House; here am I come away at three-thirty; absolutely nothing doing, I give you my word. I haven’t made a fiver this account. Here--would you like the book? I’ve got to go out, and some one’ll grab it like a shot if you don’t lay hold of it.’

The other youths seemed to have melted away during this speech, so that when Mr. Pryor, convinced that he had made himself most agreeable, handed him the fortunate novel of the season, and hurried away to gossip about it in as many drawing-rooms as he could work in before dressing-time, Sainty found himself alone with the book in his hand. He sat down to wait for Arthur, and began turning over the pages.

So it was for this that Parsons had wanted to come to Belchamber. Now he understood. As Pryor had said, they were all drawn to the life. ‘Well, it doesn’t demand much imagination to write a book in that way,’ he thought. Presently he came to the passage about the young don, and found he was smiling in spite of himself at Newby’s happy confidence that the character could by no possibility have been drawn from him. The portrait was one-sided and most malevolent, but quite unmistakable. A year ago he would have been beyond words indignant at this ill-natured caricature of his friend and hero. Now he could not repress a faint feeling of amusement. What had happened to him in the meanwhile, he wondered; he felt ashamed of his want of loyalty. ‘Lord Arthur Chambers askin’ for you, m’lud,’ a discreet club waiter murmured in his ear; and he remembered with a start that in life as in Ned Parsons’ story, the protagonist of the moment was not himself but his younger brother.

‘Infernally thirsty weather,’ Arthur remarked, as he dropped gracefully into a chair. ‘May I have a whisky and soda?--thanks.’ Then to the waiter, without allowing Sainty time to answer, ‘A large whisky and soda, please, with some ice and a slice of lemon. Well, old chap,’ he continued, turning again to his brother as the man departed, ‘and what’s brought you to town?’

‘You,’ answered Sainty severely.

‘O God! old man, not a jaw,’ Arthur pleaded wearily; ‘it’s too hot’

‘Did you see me yesterday?’ Sainty asked suddenly.

‘No, old boy--where?’ said Arthur, with slightly awakened interest.

‘About five o’clock, in Piccadilly. You were in a hansom.’

Arthur flushed crimson all over his handsome face. ‘The devil!’ he said simply, in a manner which told more plainly than words that he had _not_ seen his brother.

‘Think of the imprudence of it,’ Sainty remonstrated (quoting Claude, rather to his own surprise; it was not in the least what he had meant to say). ‘You might just as likely have met Uncle Cor as me, or some one who knew you, and might have written to mother.’ He did not like to name Lady Eccleston, who was the person he had in his mind.

‘I wasn’t doing anything I was ashamed of,’ Arthur answered doggedly.

Then there was a little pause, during which the waiter reappeared with a long clanking tumbler, and the brothers sat and looked at one another gloomily.

‘Well?’ asked the younger, as he sipped his refreshment.

‘Do you often drink between meals?’ Sainty asked. ‘Are there none of the stereotyped bad habits that you haven’t contracted yet?’

‘An occasional whisky and soda when one’s thirsty doesn’t make a man an habitual drunkard----’

After a second pause, ‘I suppose you want to know who it was?’ Arthur suggested, with another blush.

‘I don’t know that I do,’ Sainty answered. ‘It was evident enough the sort of person----’

But Arthur cut him short. ‘I won’t hear a word against her,’ he said hotly. ‘Of course she’s an actress, and that’s enough to make people say deuced ill-natured things; but she’s as good a girl----’

‘Do you mean to say----’ Sainty was beginning, when Arthur suddenly melted, leaned forward, and laid an affectionate hand on his.

‘Look here, old man,’ he said, ‘of course I don’t mean that she’s immaculate; but she’s told me a lot about herself, and I’m sure she’s more sinned against than sinning, you know, and all that. And I’m awfully in love with her; you may as well know it first as last. And I can’t stand hearing her talked about as if she was just a common woman. What are you doing to-night? I’ve persuaded her to come to supper with me, and asked some of her pals; will you come to the theatre with me and see her act, and come and meet her at supper? You’ll see for yourself how awfully respectable and jolly and all that she is.’

Sainty’s mind flew to the little note in his pocket; he would much rather have dined with the Ecclestons, but perhaps it was his duty to go and inspect the syren who had captured his brother, and he was not without curiosity as to a side of life with regard to which he was as ignorant as a girl. ‘How can I help him,’ he thought, ‘if I know no more of his life and temptations than mother does?’ And he shuddered to think of the light in which Lady Charmington would view his acceptance of the proffered supper-party.

‘You had better dine here with me first,’ he said resignedly; ‘Uncle Cor is dining out.’

Arthur was so delighted at the ease with which he had brought his brother into line with his plans, and so excited by the anticipation of the evening’s amusement, that Sainty found it impossible to get anything out of him as to the extent to which he had been neglecting his work. All mere prosaic questions of that sort seemed to the enamoured swain so entirely trivial that Sainty himself began to wonder why he attached such undue importance to them. Under the influence of what seemed almost like an unselfish passion, Arthur appeared so much more amiable than usual, that he, who had come to lecture, came perilously near remaining to sympathise. He learned that the lady of the hansom was Miss Cynthia de Vere, who was performing in a piece called ‘_Africa Limited, or the Day of All Jeers_,’ a really rattling piece, in which she was perfectly ripping, that she had a not very important _rôle_, as far as words went, which was of course due to professional jealousies, but she was on the stage nearly all the time, and wore some ‘clinking’ costumes.

‘By the way,’ Sainty inquired, just as Arthur was about to leave him, ‘how did you come to meet Miss de Vere?’

‘Oh, Claude introduced me to her, one of the few good things I owe him.’

‘Claude!’ Sainty bounded. He could only gasp, as the full measure of his cousin’s duplicity forced itself upon him.

‘You needn’t think the worse of her on that account,’ Arthur said. ‘She doesn’t like our slimy cousin; she told me so. She says he’s a bad lot, and so he is. Between you and me, I think he’s behaved badly to her in some way. She said she’d no cause to love him, but of course I couldn’t _ask_ her anything about it. Tata, old chap; see you later. I must go and tell a certain person you’re coming; she’ll be awfully pleased.’

_Africa Limited_ was one of the first of those musical farces which have revolutionised the English stage; it had a great quantity of characters, and no particular plot. The first act took place in England, the second in what was supposed to be Algeria, and was represented by a mixture of the tropics and a pantomime transformation scene. There were any number of songs and dances, that could be introduced or omitted at will, and the time of day was morning, sunset, limelight, or back to high noon, with bewildering rapidity, and a total disregard of the ordinary sequence of the hours. There were a pair of serious and lyrical lovers, who discoursed sentimental ballads and duets; a pair of secondary lovers, more facetious and less sentimental; an excruciatingly funny comic man from the halls, who assumed every kind of disguise for no particular reason; a barbarous potentate, who turned out to be Irish, and the comic man’s long lost grandfather; several dancers of _pas-seuls_, and last, but not least, a number of extremely handsome young ladies, who did not seem to have much connection with the story, but who turned up in the most unlikely places, always gorgeously dressed, and had each three sentences to say in the course of the evening. It was one of this frolic band whom Arthur shyly indicated to his brother as Miss Cynthia de Vere, and in whom Sainty without much difficulty recognised the damsel he had seen in Piccadilly. Across the footlights and out of the pitiless sunshine of a summer day, she made a striking and picturesque appearance enough. She smiled affably at the brothers, and at several other acquaintances in the stalls and boxes, and took a most perfunctory interest in what was going on upon the stage.

A rather _recherché_ dandyism was at that moment the correct style for young men about town, and Arthur was got up to kill, with a vast expanse of shirt-front illuminated by a single jewel, white kid gloves, and a cane, his fair curls cropped, flattened, and darkened as near to the accepted model as nature would allow, and his face very pink and solemn over his high collar. He went out between the acts ‘to smoke a cigarette,’ and returned with a new buttonhole and a peculiarly fatuous smile never produced by tobacco.

As they drove to the restaurant where they were to sup, he obliged Sainty with a catalogue _raisonné_ of the guests. ‘Charley Hunter’s coming, and Agnes Baines, the girl next but two to Cynthia, because Charley’s awfully mashed on her; Mabel Hodgson, that handsome girl at the other corner from Cynthia; and I had to ask that little cad Harry Atides, because he won’t let her go anywhere without him; they say he beats her. Cynthia has such an awfully good heart; she asked me to ask her, because she has such a dull life. I don’t see why she stays with that little beast. Then there is Elise Balbullier, the French girl--she’s awfully amusing and clever; Clara Bingham, one of the chorus girls--she’s a pal of Cynthia’s; and Colonel Hoby--he knows all the girls, and they like him, and he chaffs ’em, don’t you know.’

Some of us not yet in our dotage can remember when it was by no means an easy thing to find a place in London whereat to sup; but about the time that pieces of the type of _Africa Limited_ came into fashion, the play-going public discovered that it was unequal to the intellectual effort of witnessing them without the support of two dinners, and the first house of entertainment to cater for this new need was the Hotel and Restaurant Fritz, so called after its enterprising manager. Everything was on a scale of hitherto unprecedented luxury and proportionate expense; the waiters, of every conceivable nationality, wore short jackets and white aprons like those in a French café. A real chef directed an army of myrmidons in the adjoining kitchen. There were shaded electric lights, and little vases of flowers on the tables, among which dignified head-waiters walked like dethroned potentates in irreproachable evening dress, while a string-band made conversation appear a superfluity. A negro in a fez made Turkish coffee at a sort of altar in the midst, and the decorations suggested the saloon of the most expensive Atlantic liner.

The brothers had to struggle to the cloak-room through a crowd of all ages and sexes, the women with fresh powder on their noses pulling out their crushed laces, the men settling their ties and stroking their back hair. Among these latter they suddenly found themselves face to face with Claude. Arthur pushed past him with a sulky nod. Claude jerked his head after him. ‘So you’ve got hold of the culprit,’ he said; ‘is it all right? have you got anything satisfactory out of him?’

‘I have got the most surprising things out of him,’ answered Sainty witheringly, looking his cousin straight in the eye.

Claude did not seem to notice. ‘I’m waiting for Lady Deans and Lady Dalsany,’ he said. ‘Women take such an infernal time prinking. Have you seen your cousin Trafford? He’s supposed to be supping with us, or rather we with him; but what are _you_ doing in this unlikely place?’

‘Oh, _I_’m supping in quite a different _monde_,’ said Sainty in a low vibrating voice, which he tried to keep very steady and sarcastic; ‘my brother has invited me to meet the girl of his heart. I really must offer you my sincerest thanks for the admirable way you’ve looked after him for me.’ He was swelling with righteous indignation and a consciousness of having driven a nail of incisive bitterness through the counterfeit coin of his cousin’s sympathy, as he rejoined Arthur and delivered up his hat to the attendant.

Possibly with some touch of quite new prudence born of his conversation with Sainty, but much more probably with a view to doing proper honour to his fair guest, Arthur had retained a private room, rather, as it appeared, to the disappointment of the ladies, who had looked forward to seeing and being seen in the big restaurant, but immensely to the relief of his elder brother. The table was profusely decked with long trails of smilax and a quantity of those florists’ roses that are all of one size and shape and colour, and seem to have been manufactured by the dozen, ready packed in cardboard boxes, having no more suggestion about them of growth by any natural process than the little red silk shades on the electric lights.

Miss de Vere, resplendent in green velvet, with a vast number of diamond ornaments, hearts, stars, crescents, arrows, and even frogs and spiders, pinned into the front of her gown, sat on Arthur’s right and between the two brothers. She just touched a string of pearls at her throat, smiling archly on her host, as she took her seat. Long afterwards, Sainty had the opportunity of verifying his surmise that it was a present from that open-handed youth, when, in settling his brother’s outstanding liabilities, he came across it in Messrs. Rumond & Diby’s little account in company with the claret jug that had figured on the occasion of his own majority.

Seen at close quarters, the fair Cynthia was a little coarse looking, and it seemed to Sainty that a person to whom the art of painting her face must be professionally familiar, ought to have acquired more delicacy of touch. Her eyes were very large, and what the French call _à fleur de tête_; her lips were too full, too red, and seemed to show too much of their linings; and her teeth, which had flashed so brilliantly across the footlights, were less dazzling on a nearer inspection. Her figure and carriage were superb, but her hands, though unnaturally whitened, were not pretty, and her nails were ill-cared for and perhaps a little bitten. She was extremely gracious to Sainty, and evidently anxious to impress him with her _tenue_ and the elegance of her manners.

‘I met Lady Deans in the cloakroom,’ she began; ‘isn’t she a handsome woman? I _do_ admire her. Isn’t it odd, her Christian name’s Vere, and so’s my surname? and we’re both so tall. Some one once said we might be sisters, but of course that’s nonsense. I know she’s a great deal better lookin’ than me.’

‘It had not occurred to me that you were alike----’ Sainty was beginning, but Arthur cut in. ‘Rats,’ he said. ‘You know she isn’t a patch on you,’ for which gallant speech he was rewarded by a rap on the knuckles from his enslaver’s fork. Though he gazed enraptured in her face, she paid him very little attention, and continued to address her conversation to Sainty.

‘We had a little supper at my place last night; I wish I’d known you were in town; your brother was there. Oh, all very quiet, of course; only a little soup, and lobster cutlets, and nothing else hot but the fowls; a few little things in aspic, and some plover’s eggs, that’s all; but we were very jolly. Straddles came, the famous _comique_, and sang some of his songs and made us roar; and one or two other people sang, and then we cleared away the furniture and had some dancing. We kept it up till four o’clock. I declare I’m quite sleepy; ain’t you, Clara?’

Miss Bingham, a little, heavily painted black and red lady, replied from the other end of the table that she couldn’t keep her eyes open. ‘Lor! we did have fun, though,’ she said; ‘how was the poor piano this morning, after those boys pouring the champagne into it?’

‘Oh, don’t speak of it,’ said Miss de Vere. ‘You know that lovely new drapery I’d got for it, plush and Liberty silk; they completely ruined it. I was really cross. I don’t see any fun in spoiling people’s things.’

‘What a shame!’ said Arthur. ‘May I give you a new one?’

‘No, naughty boy, don’t you be extravagant. Why didn’t _you_ come?’ she added, turning to Miss Hodgson, the beautiful statuesque lady who sat on Arthur’s left with a fixed smile on her lovely mouth that recalled the hairdresser’s window. She was eating a good deal, but not adding much to the conversation. Thus appealed to, she glanced towards the little Greek, still with the same amiable absence of expression, and nodded gently.

‘Do you mean I wouldn’t let you go?’ snarled Mr. Atides.

‘Oh no,’ she cooed.

‘Then why the devil didn’t you go? _I_ don’t know----’

‘_Petit monstre_,’ murmured Miss Balbullier to Sainty. ‘_Est-il insupportable! V’là longtemps que je l’aurais planté là si j’etais Mabel._ ‘Oby, what is “planted there” in English?’

‘Chuck ‘im, give ‘im the mitten,’ promptly responded that gallant officer.

Sainty wondered just what kind of weird irregular regiment could once have been commanded by this blue-nosed veteran, with his dyed moustache and damp grizzled curls; his hands and eyes were so much older than anything else about him, as to give an uncanny suggestion of magic, as of some imperfectly transformed Faust.

‘_Tiens! la mitaine?_ I ignore the phrase,’ said mademoiselle.

Mr. Atides continued to growl into his plate with a very evil expression, like a dog over a bone, and Agnes Baines, a very pretty fair girl with a pronounced Cockney accent pursued an eager conversation across him with Miss Bingham, as though he were an empty chair.

‘’E’s given ’er a tiara,’ Sainty heard her say; ‘none of your little ‘undred-pounders, a real fine one with big stones in it.’

‘Isn’t Agnes vulgar?’ Cynthia murmured to him, very impressive and supercilious from the heights of her superior gentility. ‘She’s had so few advantages, poor girl! but she is pretty, don’t you think?’

‘They say he’s goin’ to marry ’er,’ Miss Baines continued.

‘Your English girls are so kveer,’ the French lady remarked to Sainty; ‘zay sink of nozzing but gettin’ married. To me zat seem so sorrrdid,’ As Mademoiselle Elise was credited with having already ruined three young men during the brief period of her sojourn on these shores, without any thought of ceremonial formalities, this sentiment was perhaps not so disinterestedly high-minded as it sounded.

Charley Hunter, who had been vainly trying to attract Miss Baines’ attention--though perhaps more of her conversation was addressed to him than he realised--and gnawing his beardless lips at the ill success of his manœuvres, here turned his back squarely on her and addressed himself to Arthur.

‘They say they’re going to raise the standard; isn’t it beastly? as if the damned exams. weren’t hard enough as it is.’

‘My little feller from Aldershot says they are going to make ’em so stiff that none of you Johnnies will be able to pass unless you jolly well buck up,’ remarked Miss Bingham cheerfully.

‘I hope you will use your influence with my brother to make him work,’ Sainty said, turning to Cynthia; ‘it’s very important he should pass.’

‘He’s a bad boy,’ said Miss de Vere playfully, ‘but I’m always at him not to be so idle.’

This speech being greeted with derisive laughter by some of the company, the lady indignantly demanded if they didn’t believe her.

‘There were no exams. in my day,’ cried Colonel Hoby, ‘and damn me if I think they turned out less good officers than the damned spindle-shanked round-shouldered crew of short-sighted asses you have in the army nowadays. They ought to be parsons.’

‘Hear, hear! Fieldmarshal,’ said Arthur. ‘I wish we had you in Pall Mall; there’d be a lot more good fellows in the army than there are, if you were Commander-in-chief.’

Sainty was growing weak with the effort of trying to find something agreeable to say to either of his neighbours. He was oppressed with a sense of the dreariness of the whole function. He had come prepared to be a little shocked, but half hoping for a touch of reckless gaiety. If this was the sort of entertainment Tannhäuser found in the Venusberg, he thought the pilgrimage to Rome must have been an exhilarating change. He found himself almost wishing for the young men who had poured champagne into Miss de Vere’s piano, to lend some semblance of liveliness to the proceedings. With its banal unimaginative luxury and sordid second-rate chatter, this one excursion of his into Bohemia was as dull as one of his mother’s religious dinner-parties. And to think that it was for the privilege of frequenting this sort of society that dozens of young men of Arthur’s stamp ruined themselves yearly, on the very threshold of life! Uncle Cor might not be very exciting, but he surely was better company than Atides or Colonel Hoby. But then Sainty was constitutionally unfitted to give its due importance to love’s young dream.